Sublime

And on the other hand it legalized the exploitation of this specific willingness to work, in that it also interpreted the employer’s business activity as a calling.

A man without a calling thus lacks the systematic, methodical character which is, as we have seen, demanded by worldly asceticism.

Weber understood charisma as arising within relationships—a function of two-way interaction between the leader and the follower.

Max Weber's (1930 [1906]) famous thesis of the ‘spirit of capitalism’ that market exchange processes are cultural practices, and

This aspect outweighed the other idea which was also present, that work in the calling was a, or rather the, task set by God.24 And in its further development, orthodox Lutheranism emphasized this aspect still more. Thus, for the time being, the only ethical result was negative; worldly duties were no longer subordinated to ascetic ones; obedience

They did not wish to impose mortification81 on the man of wealth, but the use of his means for necessary and practical things. The idea of comfort characteristically limits the extent of ethically permissible expenditures. It is naturally no accident that the development of a manner of living consistent with that idea may be observed earliest and m

Now naturally the whole ascetic literature of almost all denominations is saturated with the idea that faithful labour, even at low wages, on the part of those whom life offers no other opportunities, is highly pleasing to God. In this respect Protestant Asceticism added in itself nothing new. But it not only deepened this idea most powerfully, it

Conwell summarized the links between wealth and godliness: “To make money honestly is to preach the gospel.”34 Wealth was no longer a means of liberating oneself from labor (or from the necessity for instrumental or market-based reasoning). Instead of allowing one the leisure to cultivate one’s self and serve one’s community, wealth became, in and